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Sherlock 2.03 - The Reichenbach Fall
Well.
Spoilers, naturally.
I wonder how this episode would've gone over with an audience not pre-invested in Sherlock, or the Sherlock Holmes franchise altogether. I'm not that audience -- I am one of those handy souls for whom the word Reichenbach strikes a chilling chord and, I imagine, furthermore since the tone of Sherlock is often grimmer and more noir-influenced than other Sherlock Holmes adaptations and there seemed an at least slightly realer risk of killing the character for real in "The Final Problem," asnature Conan Doyle intended.
My feelings -- they really troweled on the emotional moments this time, and it was super-effective generally, but man, fuck Mycroft Holmes's life. I mean, seriously, fuck his life. You could make a series called Mycroft and the last episode would be called "The Reichenbach FML." Like, say you're Mycroft and you apportion your hectic life between trying to save queen and country and trying to raise your prodigious, manic-depressive little rebellious brother who hates you every time you try to impose some semblance of order on your home lives, none of which is helped by how you are proud and British and rich and stuffy and do not know how to emote. And then you grow up and your brother still loathes your every intervention, including when you try to send him to rehab, so you have to stalk him passive-aggressively to look out for him. And then you keep accidentally getting him into trouble when he keeps running into your national secrets, and your enemies use you against each other, until finally you compromise his safety to try and get something out of a prisoner baddie and he apparently uses it to try and gaslight your little brother and drive him to public suicide. And fandom hates you anyway for some reason.
Like I think Simple Plan wrote a song for Mycroft Holmes right here and it goes like this.
Poor Mycroft. People are all harping on how Lestrade's lost his job and everything, which he only has if Moffat develops a sudden consideration for continuity that he's so far lacked, but Mycroft is forever going to be The Mycroft Who Got His Little Brother Killed or at the least The Mycroft Who Couldn't Save His Brother From Having To Fake His Own Death if he's in on the plan which I'm not sure how he could be. It makes me want to work on that sad Philip Larkin-esque Growing Up Holmes WiP I have, except I am busy writing Moran-centric MorMor for some reason, oh well.
Benedict Cumberbatch still squirms and looks sad convincingly, which doesn't have quite the same effect as Tom Hiddleston's Quivering Shoujo Eyes of Manipulation, but leans on something different, the urge to cringe when you see someone awkward visibly embarrassed in front of you, which his Sherlock pretty much is all the time. He's practically crying on the phone to John, and at many other points. As for John, he was pretty good, but I don't think Martin Freeman has much trouble making you sympathize with John there, John always gets the conspicuously normal reactions to things. Molly! Molly Molly Molly. As of "Reichenbach," Molly is now the only non-John character I can really buy getting romantically partnered with Sherlock. Everything needs more Molly.
Jim and the crown jewels was pretty adorable, gotta say.
and I'll always believe in him, oh johnwatsonblog, oh John. :(
Putting on my thinking cap -- I think this ep was good, in the category of "better than I feared, not up to my wildest hopes," between 1.01 and 1.02 in quality. If I had to rank the series' eps in general I would probably go -- from best to worst -- "The Great Game," "The Hounds of Baskerville," "A Study in Pink," "The Reichenbach Fall," "The Blind Banker," "A Scandal in Belgravia," and keep in mind there is a huge huge gap between Reichenbach and Banker. Watching it I was of course incredibly viscerally relieved that Sherlock hadn't just actually killed himself, but from a storytelling standpoint beforehand I wondered/hoped that Moffat wouldn't Kill Him For Real as they say on TV Tropes. It'd be in better keeping with the tone of show and it would be genuinely sad and shocking -- it really looked like it was going there for a moment.
I kind of wish it did. I mean, I don't, I want more Sherlock and I don't want him to die all brokenly in John Watson's arms all "don't you fret, m'sieur Marius, I don't feel any pain." Then again, I kind of do. We all know TV shows go on forever and TV characters are immortal, I'd appreciate it if they weren't. We all know that a hero like Sherlock Holmes couldn't actually be driven to suicide by character assassination and threatening his loved ones, but I wish we were wrong. It would've sucked, I would've been sad, but I am a little sadder that TV missed an opportunity to genuinely break my heart about something. It would've actually made it a different adaptation, rather than, well, a different one.
The plotting was all right, a little disconnected in bits and the whole thing seemed to lean really hard on both Mycroft and John being stupid in order for Jim to accomplish what he needed, but not so choppy that it distracted me too much (Belgravia) (Belgravia) (Belgravia). I wonder like the rest of fandom what his fake-out trick was, other than that it involved Molly; I'm in the camp of "something with getting John to be concussed and not quite witness it" but whatever it is I'm sure it'll be unsatisfactory, just like "The Final Problem," only without quite the excuse.
John is a little overplayed in his emotional obtuseness in this season, I think partly because Freeman and Cumberbatch's acting doesn't always match; Freeman acts very stoic and reserved and like he belongs to a world of stoic, reserved people, while Cumberbatch is queeny and hyperactive and expressive and his visible emotions change with the wind, so at a certain point it gets ridiculous that John can't read him like an open book in large print when we clearly can. You can't just tell us a character comes off like an unreadable Vulcan when he clearly doesn't. It makes you start wondering if John is just really stupid. Which should not be a question you should ask about Dr. John Watson. He's not Dr. Jam Watson.
In other news, somehow this episode also found room to demonize its female characters for how little role they had in it. Sigh.
All in all, I think I would've made Reichenbach the Season 3 ender, not Season 2. And then I would've killed him.
Man, poor Mycroft, though. No one bites back as hard on their anger. :(
Spoilers, naturally.
I wonder how this episode would've gone over with an audience not pre-invested in Sherlock, or the Sherlock Holmes franchise altogether. I'm not that audience -- I am one of those handy souls for whom the word Reichenbach strikes a chilling chord and, I imagine, furthermore since the tone of Sherlock is often grimmer and more noir-influenced than other Sherlock Holmes adaptations and there seemed an at least slightly realer risk of killing the character for real in "The Final Problem," as
My feelings -- they really troweled on the emotional moments this time, and it was super-effective generally, but man, fuck Mycroft Holmes's life. I mean, seriously, fuck his life. You could make a series called Mycroft and the last episode would be called "The Reichenbach FML." Like, say you're Mycroft and you apportion your hectic life between trying to save queen and country and trying to raise your prodigious, manic-depressive little rebellious brother who hates you every time you try to impose some semblance of order on your home lives, none of which is helped by how you are proud and British and rich and stuffy and do not know how to emote. And then you grow up and your brother still loathes your every intervention, including when you try to send him to rehab, so you have to stalk him passive-aggressively to look out for him. And then you keep accidentally getting him into trouble when he keeps running into your national secrets, and your enemies use you against each other, until finally you compromise his safety to try and get something out of a prisoner baddie and he apparently uses it to try and gaslight your little brother and drive him to public suicide. And fandom hates you anyway for some reason.
Like I think Simple Plan wrote a song for Mycroft Holmes right here and it goes like this.
Poor Mycroft. People are all harping on how Lestrade's lost his job and everything, which he only has if Moffat develops a sudden consideration for continuity that he's so far lacked, but Mycroft is forever going to be The Mycroft Who Got His Little Brother Killed or at the least The Mycroft Who Couldn't Save His Brother From Having To Fake His Own Death if he's in on the plan which I'm not sure how he could be. It makes me want to work on that sad Philip Larkin-esque Growing Up Holmes WiP I have, except I am busy writing Moran-centric MorMor for some reason, oh well.
Benedict Cumberbatch still squirms and looks sad convincingly, which doesn't have quite the same effect as Tom Hiddleston's Quivering Shoujo Eyes of Manipulation, but leans on something different, the urge to cringe when you see someone awkward visibly embarrassed in front of you, which his Sherlock pretty much is all the time. He's practically crying on the phone to John, and at many other points. As for John, he was pretty good, but I don't think Martin Freeman has much trouble making you sympathize with John there, John always gets the conspicuously normal reactions to things. Molly! Molly Molly Molly. As of "Reichenbach," Molly is now the only non-John character I can really buy getting romantically partnered with Sherlock. Everything needs more Molly.
Jim and the crown jewels was pretty adorable, gotta say.
and I'll always believe in him, oh johnwatsonblog, oh John. :(
Putting on my thinking cap -- I think this ep was good, in the category of "better than I feared, not up to my wildest hopes," between 1.01 and 1.02 in quality. If I had to rank the series' eps in general I would probably go -- from best to worst -- "The Great Game," "The Hounds of Baskerville," "A Study in Pink," "The Reichenbach Fall," "The Blind Banker," "A Scandal in Belgravia," and keep in mind there is a huge huge gap between Reichenbach and Banker. Watching it I was of course incredibly viscerally relieved that Sherlock hadn't just actually killed himself, but from a storytelling standpoint beforehand I wondered/hoped that Moffat wouldn't Kill Him For Real as they say on TV Tropes. It'd be in better keeping with the tone of show and it would be genuinely sad and shocking -- it really looked like it was going there for a moment.
I kind of wish it did. I mean, I don't, I want more Sherlock and I don't want him to die all brokenly in John Watson's arms all "don't you fret, m'sieur Marius, I don't feel any pain." Then again, I kind of do. We all know TV shows go on forever and TV characters are immortal, I'd appreciate it if they weren't. We all know that a hero like Sherlock Holmes couldn't actually be driven to suicide by character assassination and threatening his loved ones, but I wish we were wrong. It would've sucked, I would've been sad, but I am a little sadder that TV missed an opportunity to genuinely break my heart about something. It would've actually made it a different adaptation, rather than, well, a different one.
The plotting was all right, a little disconnected in bits and the whole thing seemed to lean really hard on both Mycroft and John being stupid in order for Jim to accomplish what he needed, but not so choppy that it distracted me too much (Belgravia) (Belgravia) (Belgravia). I wonder like the rest of fandom what his fake-out trick was, other than that it involved Molly; I'm in the camp of "something with getting John to be concussed and not quite witness it" but whatever it is I'm sure it'll be unsatisfactory, just like "The Final Problem," only without quite the excuse.
John is a little overplayed in his emotional obtuseness in this season, I think partly because Freeman and Cumberbatch's acting doesn't always match; Freeman acts very stoic and reserved and like he belongs to a world of stoic, reserved people, while Cumberbatch is queeny and hyperactive and expressive and his visible emotions change with the wind, so at a certain point it gets ridiculous that John can't read him like an open book in large print when we clearly can. You can't just tell us a character comes off like an unreadable Vulcan when he clearly doesn't. It makes you start wondering if John is just really stupid. Which should not be a question you should ask about Dr. John Watson. He's not Dr. Jam Watson.
In other news, somehow this episode also found room to demonize its female characters for how little role they had in it. Sigh.
All in all, I think I would've made Reichenbach the Season 3 ender, not Season 2. And then I would've killed him.
Man, poor Mycroft, though. No one bites back as hard on their anger. :(
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*sobs*
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I think I would write a different review of it now, now I've rewatched it one or two more times, but my sad feels have not changed, except maybe to intensify. :(